Planning for War at Sea

Evan Wilson is an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College’s Hattendorf Historical Center in Newport, Rhode Island. A recipient of the Sir Julian Corbett Prize in Modern Naval History, he is the author or editor of six books, most recently The Horrible Peace: British Veterans and the End of the Napoleonic Wars.   Paul Kennedy is J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History and Distinguished Fellow of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University. He is author or editor of twenty books, the latest being Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II.

"A tour de force!  Planning for War at Sea keenly examines lessons drawn from naval planning and execution across four centuries, analyzing the successes and failures.  The contributors are world-class scholars, and we could ask for no better guides than Paul Kennedy and Evan Wilson.  As the world begins a new maritime century, all serious leaders will read this book; the best will learn from it and prevail to set the global agenda for the next 100 years."—Adm John Richardson, USN (Ret.) 31st Chief of Naval Operations"Kennedy, Wilson and their world-class contributors provide a warning from the past, examining the causes of naval strategic failure in a succession of case studies that highlight the impact of flawed pre-war assumptions, outmoded plans, and ill-suited equipment. Today, with the biggest navies belonging to continental powers, and technology evolving by the day, the potential for catastrophic failure has never been greater. Essential reading."—Prof. Andrew Lambert, Laughton Professor of Naval History. Kings College, London"In Planning for War at Sea, we see the enormous value of a deep knowledge of the past for helping us ask better questions about strategy and planning for our contemporary world. Kennedy and Wilson bring together insightful chapters from some of our leading naval scholars to share the wisdom naval history has to offer today’s naval professionals."—Benjamin "BJ" Armstrong, editor of 21st Century Mahan, Revised and Expanded: Sound Military Conclusions for the Modern Era."This is an impressive and valuable collection of thought-provoking essays. It is timely, given the ways recent conflicts—like those in Ukraine and Afghanistan—have forced us to reassess how best to plan and prepare for war. Wilson, Kennedy, and their contributors review historical approaches to that challenge from a maritime perspective and illuminate how difficult and important it can be."—Trent Hone, author of Learning War and Mastering the Art of Command."This book, a collection of analyses by various historians, sets out to be thought-provoking and achieves that goal. The 15 essays are versions of papers presented at a 2022 conference organized by Yale University and the Naval War College and cover the war planning of various naval powers, beginning with the Anglo-Dutch War of the 1550s and concluding in the post-Cold War era. The essays cover discrete periods of great power competition of the navies of the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, Germany, France, Japan and Holland. The essays focus on how navies prepared for war and discuss what went right or wrong, including the ability to adapt to initial failures and the failure to exploit successes."—Sea Power Magazine